When

Where

Contact

BU Initiative on CitiesBoston University Initiative on Cities617-358-8080sfox@bu.edu

POSTPONED - Animal City: The Domestication of America

Due to concerns about Coronavirus, we are postponing the March 24th book talk, "Animal City: The Domestication of America" at the Initiative on Cities. We are working to reschedule this event and will keep you updated with our plans.

Americans once lived alongside animals. They raised them, worked them, ate them, and lived off their products. This was true not just in rural areas but also in cities, which were crowded with livestock and beasts of burden. But as urban areas grew in the nineteenth century, these relationships changed. Slaughterhouses, dairies, and hog ranches receded into suburbs and hinterlands. Milk and meat increasingly came from stores, while the family cow and pig gave way to the household pet. This great shift transformed people’s relationships with animals and nature and radically altered ideas about what it means to be human.

As Animal City illustrates, these transformations in human and animal lives were not inevitable results of population growth but rather followed decades of social and political struggles. From urban development to environmental inequality, our cities still bear the scars of the domestication of urban America.